The present invention relates to a drive control device and a drive control system which control a drive device for driving a movable body provided in a game machine.
A game machine, such as a reel game machine or a pinball game machine, has been devised for executing a performance that appeals to the player's sense of vision, sense of hearing or feeling. Especially, in order to execute a performance that appeals to the player's sense of vision, a movable body whose position or shape is variable, such as a movable accessory, may be provided in the game machine. Such a movable body is driven by a drive device such as a stepping motor. Then, a processor unit for performance (hereinafter simply referred to as performance CPU) as one example of an upper-level control device transmits, to a control circuit of the stepping motor, a command to rotate the stepping motor based on the number of steps corresponding to a movement amount of the movable body that moves to a designated position in accordance with a state of a game.
Further, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of controllable objects, configured to be controlled by the performance CPU, installed in the game machine so as to enhance the player's interest. For example, the game machine is installed with controllable objects such as a large number of light sources and a display device such as a liquid crystal display other than a plurality of movable accessories. For this reason, the game machine is also installed with a plurality of drive control circuits each of which controls the drive device for the movable body (e.g., see Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2012-139538 and Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2012-24238).
Moreover, there has been proposed a movable body drive device which transmits an operation result of the movable body to the upper-level control device and drives the movable body by a drive unit based on a command from the control device or the operation result, so as to accurately move the movable body to a desired position (e.g., see Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2009-247833).
In order for the performance CPU to accurately move each movable body or grasp abnormality having occurred in each movable body, the performance CPU needs to acquire, from each drive control device, information concerning a state of each movable body controlled by the drive control device, as described in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2009-247833. However, since the number of terminals of the performance CPU is limited, each drive control device may be connected in parallel with each other to the performance CPU. Accordingly, in order to avoid collision of a signal from each drive control device to the performance CPU, the performance CPU individually outputs an information acquirement request signal to each drive control device in accordance with a polling system, for example. The drive control device having received the information acquirement request signal outputs a response signal including necessary information to the performance CPU. Therefore, for acquiring information from all the drive control devices, the performance CPU has been required to repeat transmission of the information acquirement request signal and reception of the response signal just the number of times being the number of drive control devices. As a result, the more the number of drive control devices installed in the game machine increases, the longer the cycle required for acquiring information on each drive control device. This might make it difficult for the performance CPU to control such a movable body as required to have real-time characteristics. Further, with the information acquirement cycle becoming longer, when abnormality occurs in a drive device such as a motor for driving the movable body, the timing for making an abnormality detection report from the drive control device that controls the drive device to the performance CPU might be delayed to increase the risk of breakdown and the like.